INFICON Holding AG

It is half past nine by my watch, so good morning and welcome everyone. My name is Bernhard Schweitzer, investor relations contact at Inficon. I have the pleasure of hosting this online Microsoft Teams webcast. Thank you for attending Inficon's conference on its second quarter and half year 2026 results. With us today are Oliver Wyrsch, CEO of Inficon and Dimitrij Lisak, CFO of Inficon. The management team will first present the results and then answer your questions. During management's prepared remarks, you are kindly asked to turn off your microphones and cameras. You should have received by now the press release on the Q2 2026 results, together with the links to the accompanying presentation for this conference and the half-year report. All these documents are available for download in the investor section of the Inficon website at www.inficon.com. During the Q&A session you can ask questions either in writing using the chat function in MS Teams or you can add yourself to the queue of people wanting to ask questions by clicking on the raise your hand icon. I would also like to inform you that we are recording this web conference to archive the audio file later on the Inficon website. The oral statements made by INFICON during this MS Team session may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to several uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial conditions. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Having said all that, I would now like to hand over to Oliver Wyrsch. Oliver, please.

Thank you very much, Bernhard. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings release Q2 2026. We have the usual agenda today. First, I will tell you a couple of key messages and figures of the quarters, talk about the target market businesses, and then talk about your expectations. After me, then, Dimitrij Lisak, our CFO, will go into more financial details. When we look at Q2 2026, I'm very excited to say there's a couple of really strong components in it. I think three really stand out. The orders are really going up quick and accelerating across all sectors, all different businesses and products. We have sales. that grew really nicely and we have also a very strong profitability, a big step up reflecting this completed efficiency measures that we talked about in the last couple of quarters. If you go more into the detail, the Q2 sales is a clear record quarter of 198 million, up 18% year-on-year, 9.5 versus Q1, which is already a strong growth quarter, as you probably remember. We have growth across all regions and key target markets. The book-to-bill ratio is well above 1%. One of the steepest inclines ever driven by record order intake across all regions, but also all different markets have shown a very positive momentum. Of course, semiconductor and vacuum coating the strongest. Talking about this market, there we had also the strongest sales growth of 31% year on year. After also a strong Q1 that was growing already a big step up from last year and sequentially therefore Q2 is 13% up in this quarter. General vacuum continues the positive momentum, 11% up year on year, minus 3% quarter and quarter. However, that is just a timing thing because the orders are strong. I believe we'll have further positive momentum going into the future of growth here as well. RSE Auto increased by 9% year on year and 13% compared to Q1. I mean, still a demanding automotive market, but there's a couple of very strong drivers in there as well. And then security and energy, as you know, this is the timing with the big government programs. We had strong orders in Q2. also from the US, but year-on-year we declined 31% in sales, but improving 55% versus Q1. When we look at the operating results, gross margin 46.6, that's 0.7 percentage points above previous quarter, and a plus 3.5 percentage points versus Q2 last year. Operating income, I think is most relevant here to mention, 42.3 million US dollars or 21.3 percent margin versus a Q2 last year of 15.1 percent. It's an improvement also sequentially of 5 percentage percent so a big step up from the last quarter much like we explained we are now past this reconfiguration that we needed to do last year and we accelerated a number of strategic initiatives also as part of last year where we build up Thank you very much. have gone fully away but I think we could more than compensate this with this program reconfiguration. Operating cash flow robust of 48 million US dollars. Organizationally, I just mentioned it. We're very proud to say that this reconfiguration was completed of the footprint manufacturing and innovation and it showed resilience through recent supply disruptions. Also regarding the trade tensions, we feel we're very strong positioned now for the future. We continue the investment in leading-edge R&D on a similar level as before, and we are increasing production capacity, obviously with the accelerating order intake as well, capex of 8.7 million US dollars for this quarter, full year. We would expect something around 35 million US dollars. If I then jump to the Different geographies, it's a strong quarter and growth in all regions year on year. Certainly, Asia-Pacific, for understandable reasons, has most dynamic, but we can say all regions had positive momentum. Europe and Americas with nearly 20%, while Asia-Pacific over 30%. China looks a little bit slower here with 5-6%. However, that's a timing thing. The orders were also there, very strong, I think nearly the highest in China. So this is a very positive outlook for all regions, I would say, and also a great result year on year. If you then jump into the end markets semiconductor, we continue to build out our strong leading positions. This is a lot related with the strategic partnership we have in the top accounts in the industry where we work together on the next generation of their product challenges. I think this is leading to a very strong Product Pipeline that we continuously execute and launch new steps at the leading edge of all these measurement issues and data analytics issues that are in the markets to push the industry forward. We see here the strong growth that I mentioned earlier. Orders significantly up. This is not a normal ramp. This is the steepest we've ever seen. The big jump up. We grow a lot of 30%, but the orders also are really steep. And there's a lot more to come when we look at the projections that we talk through with our strategic partner, the customers. When we look at the reasons for the driver, naturally there is a data center built out and with that connected leading edge logic. High Batmiff Memory, but there's more in there. It spreads out across the semiconductor ecosystem, also into other sectors, communication, automotive, IoT-like chips. They also profit from this build-out, so we see really a momentum across all these different sub-markets that we are looking at and working in here. If we jump then into the technology end markets, we normally look at three different parts here. All of them are specifically selected synergetically in terms of R&D, in terms of strategy, but also with strong growth profile and profitability profile. When we look into These three parts, we have automotive, refrigeration, air conditioning, strong CAGR overall, like in all markets, we have a track record of growing above the market. also here, not only in semi. We continue to grow. Sales up 9% here, near 13% quarter on quarter. Solid order intake. However, underlying, it's a bit mixed as well. I believe automotive hasn't Dimitrij Lisak, Carolin Siebert is other usage and also consumer batteries are actually quite resilient no matter the most recent dynamics in the market. Service handhold expansion, this is after sales service tools. These are continuously growing over the last years. It's a continuing growth story. And then new HVAC next to the General HVAC and heat pump development there is also a data center driver establishing and not to forget the new refrigerant regulations due to climate change this is also a continuous driver for the sector what is exciting now that hydrogen gets a bit more expensive or even scarce we have launched a new product Arnova which is leak detection with air and argon, clearly much cheaper, much easier to get. I believe this is going to be a breakthrough product as well. Further establishing our number one position in this market. If you look at General Vacuum, this is across many different advanced industries. Sales 30% plus, minus 3.25% again, strong water intake. This is a timing topic more than anything else, and we believe this is going to be continuing strong growth. We are at the number one position here with the most complete instrumentation offering. A couple of industries, a couple of Submarkets here have more dynamics. I believe some of the smaller ones, newer ones, are exciting. Big science, space, robotics, but also life science. And then solar is still a bit soft. I believe we're still working through this overcapacity and looking for the next bigger step, the next techno, something around periscope, something like that. That is a little bit out in the future, probably. Thank you very much. mainly from the US, but also other programs are warming up. There's obviously rising defense budgets, which will drive this segment further, but the procurement processes are not as efficient as we would maybe like. With that, I jump to the expectations for 2026. INVICON raises the full-year 2026 guidance. Orders are very strong. Dimitrij Lisak, Carolin Siebert We also believe that we can execute. As you've seen, we have shown good quarters absorbing this growth and scaling up based on our reconfiguration and our work prior to this. So we are quite confident for the future with the upcycle accelerating, but also the other markets, as I explained earlier. There's some risks that remain, trade disputes, geopolitics. With that, we would move it from seven markets 10,750 sales in million US dollars to 750 to 780 million US dollar sales and operating income narrowed to 19 to 20% from previously 18 to 20%. And with that, I conclude. Again, as always, if you want to know more about us, follow us in the different channels. You will see all this exciting news in the different developments of new products, but also collaborations, be it space, be it with big technology companies. And you also see here new product launches are announced there, in particular what I mentioned earlier. Thank you, Oliver.

Good morning, everyone. So I will give you some more color on the quarterly financials, the half-year results, regulatory guidance and the upcoming events in the corporate calendar. First of all, to start off, Q2 was a quarter of record orders, record sales and a very strong profitability, further strengthening our balance sheet at the same time. The orders, as mentioned before, reached its highest level by far with a book to build well above one. The order intake was broad and developed strongly across all regions. Sales increased by 18.3% versus Q2 prior year to 198.1 million. And the gross margin increased as well by 3.5 percentage points versus Q2 prior year to 46.6%. Operating income ended strongly at 42.3 million, increasing by 67.2%, which represents 21.3% net sales. And with this and a sequential increase of five percentage points versus the previous quarter. The equity ratio ended solid at 64%, underlining the financial resilience of our business. and both the operating cash flow and net cash showed a strong performance, almost doubling versus the reference period prior year. CapEx ended at 8.7 million and we mentioned it earlier, we also are increasing our full year outlook for the CapEx from 30 Coming to the sales, in more detail, we grew 18.3% across all regions and three of the four end markets. Thereof, the organic growth was 74%, and the rest attributed to currency effects. Looking at the regional split, Asia-Pacific showed the strongest growth, followed by 32.5%, followed by Europe with 18.9%, Americas with 18.7%, and China with 5.6%. The operating expenses remain under close focus, overall increasing by 7.1% compared to previous year. with their R&D costs decreasing slightly by 2.1%, reflecting mainly seasonal effects and currently representing around 7% of net sales, while SG&A costs increased by 10.8%, driven mainly by personal expenses, some remaining adverse effects and continued investments in our system and infrastructure. Overall, Their operating income ended at a strong margin of 21.3% net sales and showed a substantial improvement versus the previous quarter and the previous year K2, as well as year end. Here, I would like to highlight the three key factors. First of all, the improved operational efficiencies after the completed production reconfiguration that we see reflected in the result, and also reflected in the improved gross margin by 3.5 percentage points versus Q2 2025 to 46.6%. At the same time, we had a strong top line in Q2. This also supported the margin and operating income development and continuous efficiency gains and costs on the OPEC side, while FX and tariff effects remain to a certain extent, but not as pronounced as in the previous quarter. So these would be the three main factors looking at the income tax. Development, it increased to 10.5 million US dollar, mainly driven by a higher taxable income. So there is a significant increase there compared to the reference period in Q2 25. And the net income increased by 76.4% year over year, with a margin improvement to 16.3, mainly driven as well by the higher operating income. The balance sheet remains strong and continues to reflect a solid financial position. Here specifically, the operating cash flow almost doubled, increased to 84.4 million in Q2 26. There are two key drivers. First of all, the higher net income and at the same time, the disciplined working capital management reflected in the increased inventory returns, increased payables position, but also a disciplined approach to accounts receivables increasing broadly with the net sales growth.